Written by Kim Won-young


The Case for ‘Wrongful Life’

Kim Won-young is a lawyer and disabled person in a wheelchair. Since his youth he had struggled with the question “Isn’t my life as a disabled person damaging to me, my parents, and society?”. Kim Won-young’s long-standing question resurfaced as a legal and social agenda in the ‘Wrongful Life’ cases, which he encountered as a law student during civil law class. A ‘Wrongful Life’ claim, is a claim for damages against a doctor, filed by a child with a disability. The child claims that the fact of being born into the world with a disability is a loss in itself, caused by the doctor’s failure to diagnose the child’s disability in advance. Is being born into the world with a disability truly a loss compared to not being born at all? Kim Won-young decided to answer the question himself.

In this book, Kim Won-young attempts to prove that people who are not seen as equal members of a society, the ones who are often classified as ‘wrongful lives’, such as the disabled, the poor, and the sexual minorities, are dignified and charming in their own existence. Kim Won-young’s thoughts, experiences and personal struggle to fully accept his identity as a person with disability, are deeply embedded in his arguments.

Through his candid and passionate arguments, we learn how respect for human beings can grow in our daily encounters, and how courageous minorities need to be in order to accept their own limitations and differences as their identity. Kim Won-young’s book is also an exploration of how the identities and unique stories of minorities can find their way into the world of laws and institutions.

_Shogakukan (Japan)